Federal institutions must look beyond the criminal justice system for weeding out unscrupulous immigration consultants.

The first paper that I wrote in law school was about legal ethics. I submitted a seven-page essay arguing that restricting the practice of law to graduates of law school was unethical, given the crisis of access to justice that so many face, and that the free market should instead regulate who can and cannot charge fees to provide legal representation. I got my lowest mark in law school.

The study and practice of law moderated many of my views, and my opinion on who should be able to practise law has been adjusted accordingly. It has become clear to me that those who receive fees in exchange for the provision of legal advice must be regulated, and that in an era of easy Internet marketing, paid-for reviews and fake news, the free market is incapable of performing this role. However, I still believe that access to the ability to practise law should be extended beyond those who have completed three years of law school.

It may not be surprising then that, unlike many immigration lawyers, I do not consider the existence of immigration consultants to be inherently problematic. When I started practising immigration law, a local immigration consultant was an important mentor to me, and some of the most passionate people I know who are advocating for greater justice and fairness in Canada’s immigration system are consultants.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to practise immigration law for long before encountering people who have been the victims of immigration consultants who provided extremely bad representation, ranging from sheer incompetence to fraud. In many other cases, the prospective immigrants were not victims of fraudulent consultants but willing participants in their schemes. What’s more, it is also apparent that many unscrupulous immigration consultants do not fear any consequences from their regulator and seemingly act with impunity.

I do empathize with their regulator, the Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council (ICCRC). In 2003, the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants (CSIC) was established as the first independent governing body of the immigration consulting profession. In 2008, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration determined that the CSIC was not providing adequate regulation, and in 2011 the CSIC was replaced by the ICCRC. Now, in June 2017, the same parliamentary committee has determined that the ICCRC is not doing a sufficient job of regulating consultants and protecting the public, and has again recommended that a new regulatory body be created. It is not difficult to envision this cycle repeating itself every five years.

Perhaps the best approach that the government could take to the regulation of immigration consultants is to allow the consultants’ regulatory body time to gain experience and mature.

The deficiencies of the ICCRC are constantly contrasted with the strengths of provincial law societies, which hardly seems fair given that most provincial law societies are over a hundred years old, while the ICCRC has existed for only six. Perhaps the best approach that the government could take to the regulation of immigration consultants is to allow the consultants’ regulatory body time to gain experience and mature.

However, until the immigration consulting profession demonstrates that it can be effectively self-regulated, the government must act to protect the public from unscrupulous and incompetent consultants. The people who would benefit most are the many hard-working immigration consultants who constantly see their profession’s reputation dragged through the mud.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canada Border Services Agency are both responsible for investigating licensed immigration consultants who engage in fraud. A representative of the CBSA recently told the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration:

We have just over 200 criminal investigators across Canada who are responsible for investigating an array of crimes under IRPA [Immigration and Refugee Protection Act], as well as under the Customs Act. As a result, we use a tiered process with respect to issues that involve consultants. Generally, we go after individuals, or investigate individuals, who are the organizers of, let’s say, mass misrepresentation or mass fraud, rather than the one-offs. In terms of how we’re approaching this, we are looking at where the greatest deterrent could occur. We are looking at the big organizers, rather than the individual who may have provided information for profit in one case, and so forth. I do believe that we are using the resources that we have to the best of our ability, based on a risk profile.

It is understandable that the CBSA would want to pursue the most flagrant ethical breaches, such as the misdeeds of a Vancouver “ghost” (unlicensed) consultant who recently went to jail for eight years after putting fraudulent passport stamps in people’s passports. But the cumulative effect of the everyday misrepresentations — including, as recently reported by the CBC, consultants facilitating the illegal charging of fees by employers to employees for jobs — is just as great a threat to the integrity of Canada’s immigration system.

Criminal prosecutions require a high level of proof, and the criminal justice system has limited investigatory and prosecutorial resources. In any case, incompetent (as opposed to fraudulent) representation would not result in criminal charges. So, in seeking ways to protect the public, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) must look beyond the criminal justice system.

There are several other measures that IRCC and the IRB can take.

First, the government should amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations to provide IRCC with the power to temporarily refuse to process applications submitted by people represented by consultants whom IRCC has previously determined to be unscrupulous. Prospective immigrants should be advised that the processing of their applications will not continue until they retain new representatives. IRCC should also be allowed to charge fines. IRCC has already implemented both bans and fines to penalize employers who misrepresent themselves in applications to hire foreign workers. These have proven to be excellent deterrents, and the same principles and techniques could be utilized to deter fraud by consultants.

If IRCC becomes both the visa adjudicator and the regulator of consultants, many consultants would likely be wary of aggressively challenging it.

This is not to suggest that IRCC should become a permanent regulatory body for consultants, as some people have suggested. It is crucial that immigration consultants be able to be passionate advocates for their clients, including those accused by the government of being inadmissible to Canada and those who are clearly being deliberately blocked by the bureaucracy even though they are legally qualified to immigrate. If IRCC becomes both the visa adjudicator and the regulator of consultants, many consultants would likely be wary of aggressively challenging it. However, until immigration consultants fear crossing their regulator as much as lawyers fear breaching the rules of their respective law societies, the IRCC should have the ability to refuse to interact with known unscrupulous consultants.

Second, the IRB should be given the power to refuse to allow certain consultants to appear before it. An IRB official recently told the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration:

Board members use a kind of compensatory mechanism in a hearing room. If they’re dealing with a consultant who is not able to present the client’s case, they get drawn into the arena and they have to start eliciting the evidence. It’s not something a lot of members like to do, but sometimes they feel they have to do that in order for the case to go ahead that day and for there not to be a miscarriage of justice.

This is a tremendous waste of scarce resources. The Immigration and Refugee Board should be able to simply refuse to allow incompetent consultants to represent clients before it. The IRB should work with the regulator to develop appropriate standards and testing that any consultants who wish to appear before it must pass.

Third, a significant obstacle to combatting fraud by consultants is that prospective immigrants who learn that they committed misrepresentation in an application because of poor advice fear lodging complaints against their representatives; they believe, often accurately, that they may be considered complicit in misrepresentation and could be removed from Canada or barred from entering. IRCC should allow such persons to correct their applications without fear of being barred from Canada for five years, which is the current penalty for any misrepresentation. While granting entry to someone who misstated a fact in an application may leave a bad taste in IRCC’s mouth, making progress against fraud by consultants should provide some satisfaction in compensation.

Finally, one of the principal reasons that people hire third-party representatives is language barriers. Most applicants in Canada’s economic-immigration programs must demonstrate a certain level of fluency in English or French, but this is not the case in Canada’s family reunification programs. People applying to immigrate under family reunification who do not speak either language are especially vulnerable to receiving bad advice, because they often do not understand the forms they must fill out. IRCC should provide as many of its forms as possible in the greatest number of languages possible. Any online forms should be able to connect to free translating services like Google Translate. When applicants can communicate with IRCC in their own language, unscrupulous consultants will be much less able to provide information on forms that does not reflect what their clients told them, and applicants will be less able to claim that they did not know what an immigration consultant wrote on their behalf.

In my experience, the majority of immigration consultants are ethical and provide very valuable services. It is they, frankly, who have been let down by both the government and their regulator. They deserve better, and well-considered actions are needed to remove the bad individuals who are ruining their profession’s reputation.

Photo: Temporary foreign workers Honorato Peralta and his wife Vanessa Tamondong (seen with their two year old son JC Peralta), addressed the media in 2014 on how their family was victimized by an employer and their immigration consultant. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

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Steven Meurrens is a partner at Larlee Rosenberg LLP, an immigration law firm in Vancouver. He is the chair of the Canadian Bar Association of British Columbia’s immigration subsection and also a member of the City of Vancouver’s Mayor’s Working Group on Immigration.

Steven Meurrens is a partner at Larlee Rosenberg LLP, an immigration law firm in Vancouver. He is the chair of the Canadian Bar Association of British Columbia’s immigration subsection and also a member of the City of Vancouver’s Mayor’s Working Group on Immigration.